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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Not long ago, my mom's friend, Aunt Patty, asked if I could find out how the phrase "man's best friend" got started. So I did some in-depth research, and I was shocked to learn that this phrase actually was invented right here in Missouri! Not only that, but it happened in Johnson County, Missouri, which is just one county over to the east from Jackson County, where I live. Wow! Who would have thought I was living in such a famous place?
Well, anyway, the phrase "man's best friend" has a story that goes with it, and I am sorry to say that it is a sad story, just like some of the other stories I've told you. But this fact will not keep me from telling the story to you anyway.
So what happened was that a long time ago, in 1869, there was this man named Charles Burden living in Johnson County, Missouri. And he had a black-and-tan hound named Old Drum. Mr. Burden loved this dog, and Old Drum was also valuable to him because he was a good hunting dog.
Meanwhile, on some land next to Mr. Burden's, there was a man named Leonidas Hornsby, and he was a brother-in-law of Mr. Burden's. Mr. Hornsby had a bunch of sheep on his land, but they kept getting killed by dogs, which made Mr. Hornsby mad. So he told all his neighbors that he would shoot the next dog that he saw on his property. And the next dog he saw was Old Drum, so he shot him dead.
Then Mr. Burden got mad because his dog had been killed, so he took Mr. Hornsby to court. There were three different trials, and a whole bunch of important lawyers got involved, so it was a big deal. At the third trial, which was in the courthouse at Warrensburg, Missouri, a lawyer named George G. Vest made the closing argument to the jury. Later on, Mr. Vest would get elected to the Senate in Washington, but that's not part of this story about Old Drum.
Anyway, Mr. Vest made a speech about how much dogs mean to people and how a dog will still be a person's friend, even when all his other friends have gone away and left him. And the speech came to be called "Eulogy of the Dog." And here's what the speech said:
"Gentlemen of the Jury, the best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith.
The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.
Gentlemen of the Jury, a man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and the sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert he remains.
When riches take wings and reputations fall to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.”
Maybe all the jury members had dogs, and that's why they really liked this speech, but anyway, they thought Mr. Burden should get $50 to repay him for the loss of Old Drum. Which doesn't sound like much money, but back in those days, you could really buy a lot with $50, like for instance, a good hunting dog.
But Mr. Hornsby wasn't happy with the result of this trial, so the case went on to the Missouri Supreme Court. And that court said that the other court did the right thing in giving Mr. Burden the $50 for his dog. So that was the end of it all, except that the people of Warrensburg put up a statue of Old Drum on the courthouse square, and you can see it there today.
Of course, we do not really know if Old Drum was guilty of killing sheep or not. It seems kind of suspicious that he was hanging out in the sheep pasture in the middle of the night. And if he hadn't been there, he wouldn't have got shot. Mr. Burden would have been smarter to let Old Drum sleep in bed with him at night, but people didn't much let their dogs do that back in those days.
Anyway, here are the lessons I think we can learn from this story:
1. If you are a dog, don't go roaming around in sheep pastures because you might get shot.
2. If you have a lawyer who can make a good enough speech, you can probably win your case, whether you deserve to or not!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Remember when I wrote in my blog about that Japanese dog named Hachiko who waited for his dad at the train station for years even after his dad died and never came home on the train anymore? And remember that I told you they were making a movie about this story, except that it's set in America, and it has Richard Gere and Joan Allen in it?
Mom bought us a copy from Amazon.com, which is where we do some of our best shopping. And the movie is called Hachi: A Dog's Tale. We watched it Saturday night, and it didn't take too long because the movie is only 93 minutes long. And then there is a little feature thingy about how they made the movie, but that is only about 15 minutes long.
Anyway, we thought the movie was good, but it was sad, which we knew it would be because we already knew the story of Hachiko. Mom doesn't usually cry during movies, but she started crying in this movie, and she cried like all the way through the last third of it. She had to keep blowing her nose, which was distracting for the rest of us who were trying to watch the movie.
I didn't cry because dogs can't really cry. At least, we can't cry with tears, like people cry. We just whimper and whine, which I didn't do during the movie. After we finished watching it, I looked at some reviews on the internet, and I found that most of the reviewers either really, really liked this movie or else they hated it.
Everyone said it might make you cry, but the reviewers who hated the movie said that they wanted to cry because they were "bored to tears." I think these reviewers are the kind of people who probably only like movies with lots of action and chase scenes and stuff blowing up all the time. I don't like that kind of movie because it is too scary. I like to see a nice, simple story about a dog's devotion to the human he loved. That is the best kind of story of all, in my opinion, and if you agree, you should go out right now and rent or buy Hachi: A Dog's Tale and watch it. Oh, and be sure you have plenty of tissues handy!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Piper asked me if I wanted to write about some Adventures While Walking, because Barry and I usually walk farther than Piper and Gabe do, so we have more adventures. And I was flattered to be asked to write in Piper's blog again, so I said yes.
First of all, I will mention that a week ago today we could not go walking at all because there was too much snow. Here's a picture of me in the snow in our back yard. We had almost 7 inches of snow, and it was very wet, heavy snow, so when it melted, it made the yard into kind of a swamp. But the good news is that the weather warmed up quickly, and all the snow melted really fast, like in only about 3 days. And since it wasn't icy, we could go out for walks a whole bunch of days this week.
One thing we saw a lot was daffodils because they are starting to bloom. Mom's daffodils haven't bloomed yet because they are slow daffodils, but lots of other people's are blooming. I like daffodils because they are good to pee on. Tulips are also good to pee on. The tulips have come up, but they haven't started blooming yet, which doesn't matter to me because all I need for peeing purposes is the leaves.
So anyway, besides daffodils, here are some other things we have noticed lately in our neighborhood:
The people across the street have started flying a Tibetan flag and some prayer flags. We think this means they want Tibet to be free from Chinese rule. These neighbors are very nice. They have two dogs and some cats. Sometimes their dogs bark at us, and Barry and I bark back.
Here's our old friend St. Francis. He only has one gnome now. We don't know what happened to the other one. The gnome that is still there has turned all dark-colored, except for his red hat. He is playing a ukulele or something like that, so maybe he prefers to perform in blackface.
The bunnies are out, but not all of them are real. Luckily, it is easy for Barry and me to tell if a bunny is real or not. I hope I can find another bunny nest this year like I did last summer. That was a very special day for me when I found that nest!
The spring soccer season has started.
And finally, here's something very alarming that we saw Friday when we were out walking. This big, scary machine was tearing down a whole garage! It just smashed the garage into little pieces, and then it picked up the pieces in its big mouth and put them in a huge truck. Barry and I kept trying to drag Mom away from this scary thing, but she wanted to watch and take pictures! Can you imagine? Mom is just nuts sometimes!
Well, anyway, that's all the adventures we have had lately. We thought we would see some Easter decorations, but we haven't really seen any at all. Mom said she saw some giant colored eggs in people's yards in another part of town, but we didn't see anything like that here. Which is fine with me because I wouldn't want to run into a bird that was big enough to lay giant eggs!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Yesterday Mom went to the art gallery to get some more culture, and sure enough, she got some! And she even took her camera with her so she could take pictures of the culture and bring it home to show me. Except that she didn't get to take pictures of all the culture she saw, and now I will explain why she didn't.
The first thing Mom looked at was an exhibit of really old photos, like from the 1850s. And these photos were taken in Egypt so they could be put in books to show people in Europe and America that it might be fun to visit Egypt because it was an interesting and exotic place with lots of ruins. But since the photos were so old and fragile, they had to be shown in a very low light. And since you're not allowed to use a flash to take pictures in the art gallery, Mom didn't think she could get any pictures that looked good, so she didn't even try. But I borrowed one from the gallery's website, just so you could see it.
After Mom looked at the photos of Egypt, she looked at an exhibit of glass, and the glass was really pretty, so Mom started taking some pictures. Then the guard came and told Mom she couldn't take pictures of the glass because it belongs to a different art gallery, so there is a problem with the copyright or something like that. So Mom only has two pictures of the glass, and she said I couldn't use these pictures in my blog because if I did, we might all end up in jail.
Then Mom ate lunch in the Rozelle Court, which is where people eat when they are at the gallery. And Mom took a picture there because it was allowed. And what Mom had for lunch was half of a Mediterranean chicken wrap and also a really huge chocolate cookie with caramel chips in it. I wish I could have had the chicken out of Mom's sandwich, but she ate it all herself and didn't bring any home for me, which is typical of how selfish she can be sometimes.
Oh, and guess what! Mom saw a SERVICE DOG at the gallery! Mom has never seen a dog at the gallery before, but there he was, just wearing an orange vest that said "Service Dog" on it. And this dog was mostly like a yellow lab, but smaller and with a different shaped head, so he must have been mixed with something else besides lab.
Mom could not figure out what kind of service the dog was doing. The person who had the dog was not blind or deaf, and she didn't have any trouble walking, so there must have been some other reason that she needed a service dog. Mom wanted to take a picture of the service dog, but she didn't get a chance to do that, so I can't show you a photo.
Okay, well, after Mom ate lunch, she looked at some European paintings that were called Rococo, which is a silly-sounding word. And also there were some paintings called Neoclassical. Here's a Neoclassical painting by an English painter named Guy Head. And you can tell it's Neoclassical because it has a Greek lady named Iris in it, and Iris was a messenger of the Greek gods, besides also representing the rainbow. The name of the painting is Iris Carrying the Water of the River Styx to Olympus for the Gods to Swear By, which is a really long name. And it has something to do with Zeus, who was the king of all the gods, and he made the other gods swear to obey him. Anyway, I think it would have been a better painting if it had a dog in it, but that's just my own personal opinion.
Mom tried to find some paintings with dogs in them, but she did not have much luck doing this. But she did find this one painting by Thomas Gainsborough, and it's called Repose. This painting shows a bunch of cattle and horses in a field. Then down in the corner of the painting, you see the guy who is supposed to be herding the animals, but he is sleeping while the dog does all the work of watching the cows and horses. Which doesn't seem fair to me, but basenjis are not in the Working Dog group, so what do I know?
Anyway, the last thing I'm going to show you is an ancient Greek lion statue. It is really, really old, like from 325 B.C.E. It was made to be a guard in a cemetery. Mom always liked to see this lion when she was a little girl and went to the gallery with her mom and dad. I like the lion, too, because he looks happy and friendly, like he is smiling, and not like a guard lion at all. Still, I wouldn't trust him not to eat a basenji if he got the chance!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Nonja is 33 years old, which is 231 in dog years. Nonja used to paint pictures, but now she takes photographs. And the reason why she does this is that some people at the Samsung Company, which makes cameras, thought it would be good advertising if an orangutan was using one of their cameras. So they made this digital camera especially for Nonja, and it can't be broken as easily as a regular camera. Also it gives out a raisin whenever anyone takes a picture.
I wish I had a camera that would give out treats, because if I did, I would find a way to take lots of pictures, even though I don't have opposable thumbs, like orangutans do. But a camera for dogs should not have raisin treats because raisins are POISONOUS for dogs, at least if you eat a whole bunch of them, like a boxful or a cameraful. So the treats inside a camera for dogs should probably be freeze-dried liver or something like that.
Orangutans are some of the smartest primates, which is why they can be photographers. Also they sometimes make and use tools, which is another thing that shows how smart they are.There are not a whole lot of orangutans left in the wild, and that means that orangutans are ENDANGERED. Of course, they are not as cute as humans, but they are interesting to look at, and they can do clever things, so I think it would be good to have them around for a while!
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